1 I'll awake at dawn on the Sabbath day,
For 'tis wrong to doze holy time away:
With my lessons learned, this shall be my rule--
Never to be late at the Sabbath school.
2 Birds awake betimes; every morn they sing;
None are tardy there, when the woods do ring;
So when Sunday comes, this shall be my rule--
Never to be late at the Sabbath school.
3 When the summer's sun wakes the flowers again,
They the call obey--none are tardy then;
Nor will I forget that it is my rule
Never to be late at the Sabbath school.
4 But these Sabbath days will soon be o'er,
And these happy hours shall return no more;
Then I'll ne'er regret that it was my rule
Never to be late at the Sabbath school.
Source: The New Sabbath School Hosanna: enlarged and improved: a choice collection of popular hymns and tunes, original and selected: for the Sunday school and the family circle... #9
Born in 1590, William Bradford was one of the founders of Plymouth colony in 1620 and a signer of the Mayflower Compact. He served as the colony's governor for more than thirty years, and wrote "Of Plymouth Plantation," one of the first histories of European settlement in the New World, before his death in 1657.
Born of substantial yeomen in Yorkshire, England, Bradford expressed his nonconformist religious sensibilities in his early teens and joined the famed Separatist church in Scrooby at the age of seventeen. In 1609 he immigrated with the congregation, led by John Robinson, to the Netherlands. For the next eleven years he and his fellow religious dissenters lived in Leyden until their fear of assimilation into Dutch culture prompted… Go to person page >| First Line: | I'll awake at dawn on the Sabbath day |
| Title: | Never Late |
| Author: | W. B. Bradford |
| Copyright: | Public Domain |
My Starred Hymns